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LETTERS How about some more information? My wife and I had the opportunity to get away from our four kids and a grandma who lives with us for a quiet weekend. We purchased a copy of your special issue HOUSES (Spring 1987). We want to build our own home to retire in, and when we saw the home designed by Sallie Hood and Ron Sakal, we fell in love with it .. . is there any way in which we can get hold of them? We want to purchase a set of plans if possible. We will be building the home on five acres of gently sloping land overlooking the Rogue River Valley in southern Oregon. This home would be absolutely perfect for the location and for our desires and needs. -Jim Crawford, Central Poin t, Ore. Managing editor Mark Feirer replies: We have received many requests for more information on the projects in HOUSES, and forwarded the letters to the authors for response. In this second Fine Homebuilding special issue, we've added a department called "About the Houses," which provides as much information as we could gather about price, materials and other features of the houses not specifically mentioned in the articles. For readers who want more information about the designers, the department "About the Authors" includes, among other things, the architects' addresses. Design book for houses I'd like to congratulate you on your excellent special issue. I found it very informative, but more important, very inspiring. I want to encourage you to consider doing a full-scale book with this idea-like Fine Woodworking's "Design Book" series, except filled with details and information like what I found in HOUSES. I'd easily part with $50 for such a book .. -Jeffrey Ouerright, Elkhart, Ind. What about the budget? I'm a general contractor and enjoy your magazine very much. The articles and tips have been very useful. But I was disappointed to see the style of the houses chosen for the 1987 special issue. I live on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and am looking for a design to build, but most people couldn't afford to build the houses you chose, at least in this area .. -John P. Buchanan, Manomet, Mass. It was pleasant looking at the custom homes in the 1987 special issue. I became aware, however, as never before, that only a few people could ever hope to own such homes. A much more challenging task would be to provide efficient and cheerful homes for families of modest means, say those making $25,000 per year. Layer upon layer of fine About the special issue Welcome to Fine Homebuilding's second annual issue of HOUSES. As you can see from the Letters column, we hit a responsive chord with a lot of our readers, but not all of them were of the same mind. Those of you who liked it should be pleased to know that we'll continue to publish HOUSES every spring. Those who didn't like the issue generally worried that Fine Homebuilding was turning "too designy" or "too glossy," and that the article mix seemed to be turning away from nuts-and-bolts articles toward design tracts written by architects. Over the course of a year FHB will indeed run more design articles than it once did, simply because we now have seven issues instead of six. HOUSES is stocked with design articles, but not at the expense of the regular issue (which comes out six times a year). In the regular issue we'll continue to provide carefully developed construction articles about how foundations are formed, where to find the newest tools and how to lay out the stringers for a spiral stair. A great many of our readers are professional builders, but we have never been a magazine devoted solely to builders. Our readers also include substantial numbers of architects and craftsmen, and it's not unusual to find articles written by an architectjbuilder who feels entirely at home cutting dovetailed drawers. Fine Homebuilding magazine will continue to provide a place where everyone who is interested in the making of houses can meet on an equal footing to admire and learn from each other's work. 4 Fine Homebuilding How to propose an article for the special issue emphasize high-quality workmanship and thoughtful, practical design. A quick read of the Letters column will convince you that not everyone sees practicality in the same place, so that's why we try to include something for every taste and pocketbook. To consider a house for publication, we'll - need a representative selection of photos of the project, including work-in-process photos if you have them (yes, even for a design article). Original color transparencies in any format are best for magazine reproduction. We'll also want to see building and site plans if you can part with them for a while. We take good care of anything sent to us, and will return everything to you at the appropriate time whether or not the article is published. When you send your proposal in, please include a page or two that tells us about the house and how its design reflects the program. Be sure to mention any specific details that wouldn't otherwise be evident. For the special issue, we prefer that the architect write the article, just as we prefer construction articles in the regular issue to be written by whoever was doing that work. After all, who knows more about the house than someone responsible for building or designing it? If we approve your proposal, an editor will be assigned to help you develop your ideas into an article. If you would like to know more about any aspect of writing for us, please don't hesitate to contact me. -Mark Feirer, managing editor woodwork, funny windows and multi-angled roofs on choice real estate is grotesque in a country where citizens sleeping on heating vents is a common sight. Please continue to cover simple, affordable housing-that's where the workers constructing those mini-mansions of the 1980s are going to hang their hats. The San Francisco retrofit ("A New View," pp. 46-48) and the Eugene, Ore., house (Design Forum, p. 12) are prototypes of the dwelling type that deserve their own special issue in the future. -John Benocki, Portland, Ore. Pour on the porches I would like to know if in the future it would be possible to do a special issue on porches? Not simply decks, but porches: screened or not, wrap-around, one-story or two, etc. The article in Fine Homebuilding on Cape May porches was nice (FHB #14, pp. 60-61), but we'd like to see lots more! Porches seem to be a thing of the past, but I don't think so. A porch can bring so much more life to a home. We saw the pictures of the Minnesota farmhouse in HOUSES (pp. 84-89), and although we were quite taken with it, we both imagined how we would add some type of porch to make it a home. (We realize that the builder of the Minnesota farmhouse would probably be scandalized at the thought of a porch on that house. Apologies!) -Elizabeth Breslin Philadelphia, fa. & Michael Barnhart, The houses that we feature Brickbats Although we have considered your magazine of great quality in the past, the fact that you selected a dozen of what you call the "year's best houses" and didn't include one brick structure is a slap in the face to the millions of people who own brick homes. Not only have you done our industry a great disservice by excluding the finest building material available, but you have, I believe, embarrassed yourselves. Thirty-seven percent of all homes built in the United States are built of brick. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Home Builders that questioned home owners on their choice of building materials, over 85% preferred brick. These facts, coupled with a resurgence of brick use throughout the U. S., seem to us to be a contradiction when we view your special issue. Brick is one of the finest building materials ever created and has weathered the test of time for appearance and longevity. We know that a brick home will look the same 10 or 20 years from now and that it will appreciate at a higher value than any of the homes pictured in your book. We will be happy to share more information with you on brick homes and the way they can enhance the beauty of a family's living condition .. -Walter A. Galanly, Jr., President, National Association of Brick Distributors, Alexandria, Va. Managing editor Mark Feirer replies: You are correct in noting that none of the houses featured brick, but no one proposed an article about such a house. Small houses are particularly popular with our readers; and I wonder where we would find